SagebrushPony on DeviantArthttps://www.deviantart.com/sagebrushpony/art/Allie-and-Gentian-350225685SagebrushPony

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Allie and Gentian

Published:
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Description

Two characters from the yarn I'm spinning. I've got... a lot of thoughts and a lot of doubts about the universe it's found its nascency in. Like the reader that I write for may be scarce in the audience. I don't know.
Image size
1920x1080px 9.12 MB
© 2013 - 2024 SagebrushPony
Comments7
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Pix3M's avatar
:star::star::star-half::star-empty::star-empty: Overall
:star::star::star::star-empty::star-empty: Vision
:star::star::star::star-empty::star-empty: Originality
:star::star::star-half::star-empty::star-empty: Technique
:star::star::star-half::star-empty::star-empty: Impact

Looking at the composition, it seems like a piece that puts plenty of emphasis on a surreal background. I can imagine that people will appreciate this piece because of the level of detailing that you've put into this.

The thing about detailing though, I've come to a mindset that detailing doesn't always help us out. I feel that the background work is flat. I also cannot get a mental grasp of a perspective if I were to attempt to picture a horizon line in this scene. The dead trees to our left is also throwing me off as it seems to be making the hill appear awkwardly steep.

I do not want to pretend to be some expert on backgrounds but a quick look at landscapes I like tend to make it clear where the horizon line is, and they tend to include a good number of elements. Placing elements in front of another creates an illusion of depth helps make a piece more exciting. I'm not entirely sure how this can be applied to a composition with a hill as a focal point, but chances are another option we can take is just go for a composition that uses less background and puts more emphasis on our subjects.

Also beware of your use of special brushes. If you look closely at your grass, we'll eventually notice that some blades of grass are literally identical to other blades. I also spot identical dead trees on our left, and identical leaves on the tree. Redundancy like that while could be used to save time, creates a feeling of fakeness at a cost. IMO, it's better worth the time doing the manual work to avoid this redundancy that sometimes look out of place if its level of detail isn't consistent with say, our pony subjects.

As for our subjects, something about the shading makes me feel that it's sort of there, but doesn't do much. What I think I really want to see are clearly defined shadows more than just having the tree cast a shadow on them. I also wouldn't agree with trying to draw individual strands of hair as I've noticed that realistic hair has a tendency to bunch up into bigger pieces. Drawing stylized hair that bunches up tends to be much easier and more convincing especially if we're drawing ponies.

Overall, my own advice could be summed up as focusing on form, not texturing/detailing. Opinions might differ, but I prefer form without texturing, to texturing without depth. Details can be appreciated very much, but won't help us out if we're falling short with other aspects.